Ten years ago I stopped using PowerPoint, and I have not looked back. Here are the three reasons why, plus the case that you may be able to never make a slide again, no matter what your context is.
Ten years ago, the month before my son was born, I was on about 22 flights, flying all around the country, professionally speaking and presenting at organizations. In all that presenting, I have never used one single PowerPoint slide.
Consider this. In the last decade, every minute that you may have spent moving pixels, typing things into slides, editing a deck, sending them back for approval, I have done zero of that.
If you want to majorly cut down your preparation for presentations, this one is for you. If you choose to spend a few minutes with me, it could very much edit the way that you present for the rest of your career, even if you still use a couple of slides now and again.
Reason One: People Come Back for Connection, Not Content
Take conferences and events. A gathering, some national conference, some regional event. People might come for the content once. Oh, this speaker is speaking, or this session looks good.
But they will come back again and again and again because of all the connections that happen in between the content.
I realized that as soon as I put a slide up, I am directing everybody’s attention. All the potential energy that could be spent making connections in between, I am taking all that energy and attention and putting it toward content.
I guarantee you, if you ask people about the last 10 events they attended, can they write down a couple of moments or interactions that actually left them transformed, that actually changed their mind? Even if you paid a million dollars to have somebody speak, nobody is going to say, “On slide five of so and so’s presentation, everything shifted for me.”
What they will talk about is the hallway afterward. Or the dinner they went to with those people they just met.
So I learned very early on that if you want to stand out as a speaker, everybody else uses slides. If you just do not, you will stand out. I built a pretty robust career over the last decade on that idea, the one that brought me on 22 flights the month before my son was born.
Now, I do not just talk endlessly at people. That is where reason two comes in.
Reason Two: Your Delivery Is Your Best Form of Marketing
Whether you are internal or external, your delivery is your best form of marketing.
What I mean by that is what people feel and experience after spending an hour with you determines whether they call you back, whether they invite you to come in and work with a different group in the organization, and so on.
The reason I have been able to build this career is that nearly every single engagement I have ever had has turned into at least two more. Even when there were no decision makers in the room. The people in the room go back and say, “Wow, I just experienced something I have never done before.” And word travels quick.
Delivery as your best marketing has two lenses: the audience lens and the event organizer lens.
The Audience Lens
When I step on stage I say, “Hey everybody, there are a thousand people on this side of the stage. And you have collectively been alive for a lot longer than me. So the wisdom in this room is very heavily distributed offstage, and that is why I have zero PowerPoint slides today.”
When I say that phrase, without exception, the audience starts clapping. We are so used to death by PowerPoint that the applause comes before I have provided any value at all. All I did was tell them I am not going to use slides, and they clapped.
What Happens When You Trade Slides for Conversation
Somebody messaged me on LinkedIn asking about using We! Connect Cards. I actually printed out their comment. They were presenting to 700 people, and instead of just presenting at them, they wanted to invite this giant question swap where people got to make a whole bunch of connections and have conversations they otherwise would not.
I asked him how it went. His answer was twofold.
First he said it went “pretty good, missed a beat at the beginning, classical stage nervousness, but otherwise smooth waters.” Notice that the “pretty good” part was focused on his own delivery. Focused on me, me, me.
Now listen to the next part. See if you think this is pretty good: “Feedback was great. 80 to 90 people came up to me afterward and wanted me to thank you, share the outcome of their conversations. Some said they were going to end up swapping houses on summer vacation. Some met all over Europe and the US afterward. Some connected later in the day again to finish their conversations that began here.”
So if you want 80 to 90 people to come up to you after a presentation, ditch the slides. Think about whatever you are talking about and invite people to connect around that topic, that idea, that purpose. It is quite possible that 80 to 90 people will come up to you afterward and say, “Holy smokes, I have never experienced anything like that.”
Want to try this with your own group? Download a free printable version of these question cards right here.
Connection Is the Content
Talking about this on a YouTube video is a little bit hard to understand, which is part of the reason that every December I host an event called the Connectors Summit.
The tagline was inspired by something Peter Block said in a keynote at last year’s summit: connection is the content. It is one of the only events on planet Earth where connection truly is the content.
Expert master facilitators and a whole bunch of practitioners join. If you lead groups in any way, or if presenting is part of your job, your brain will melt with happiness. It all happens online.
Reason Three: Slides Are a Massive Time Sink and a Crutch
Even if you tell AI to make your deck for you, it is still such a time sink to figure out what word goes where, the design, the pixels. And 90% of that has no impact on an audience.
Whether your graphic is here or here on the slide has zero bearing on whether a group or a person is transformed and changed by it.
Not only is it a time sink, it is a massive crutch. I was at a conference literally the day before filming this and the power went out in the studio. Everybody’s breakout session had PowerPoints. I talked to two or three very nervous presenters who had no clue what to do.
For me, if the power goes out, I am like, “Sweet. More natural lighting. This is good.”
Imagine the freedom that comes with not worrying about whether your fonts populate on the new computer, or whether this or that goes right. You just do not even worry about it at all.
The AV Needs Test
I am speaking to a more narrow audience here, but if you are a professional speaker or facilitator, think about what happens when your client asks, “Hey, what are your AV needs?”
I have seen speakers send back AV needs that are two pages long, full of specific requests. Makes you look bad, in my opinion. You become harder to work with.
When somebody asks what my AV needs are on the prep call, I say, “You’re going to like this. I just need a microphone so that everybody can hear me.” The content is in the room. The slides and all the expertise and the wisdom and the magic that is going to happen, it is all on the other side of the stage.
Immediately when I say that, their face lights up. I have literally heard a hundred event organizers say, “Oh, I wish everybody would say that.”
Where to Start
You do not have to go cold turkey. Start by cutting back. Ask yourself which slides are doing real work and which ones are just there because that is what presenters do.
Then take the time you get back and spend it designing one good conversation starter instead.
I’m Chad. Have an awesome day.
Want to go deeper? Register your interest for the Connectors Summit this December, a live experience where facilitators, trainers, and leaders come together to sharpen their saw, connect, and reset.
